


Let's Stay Here

by mortalitasi



Series: into the forest [7]
Category: Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Friendship, General, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-25
Updated: 2014-08-25
Packaged: 2018-02-14 15:18:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2196717
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mortalitasi/pseuds/mortalitasi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Early morning thoughts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Let's Stay Here

Nathaniel counts progress and measures advancements in odd units. 

They aren’t in so much inches or meters or yards as they are the amount of times she lifts her eyes to his in a conversation, or how many strands of her hair he can number before she sweeps it out of her face with an absentminded wipe of the hand, tries to imagine how many lengths of morning sunlight he wouldn’t mind watching wash over the slope of her shoulders and the curve of her jaw.

A lot of them, he thinks, and the revelation doesn’t unsettle him as much as it should— or, at least, as much as he once thought it should. Complicated ideas for so early an hour in a day barely begun, but his father had always accused him of being too deep a thinker. Guilty as charged, he supposes, and the breath jumps in his throat when Lyna stirs in her sleep at his side and the fingers of the hand pressed between them curl against his skin. 

Gooseflesh skitters down his back, pimpling along the spine and rippling out to his arms. She is so small and quiet when she is here, with him, the doors to her chambers shutting out the rest of the Keep and the world. Alone in this unmoving room with the bars of light lancing through the threadbare drapes hanging over the long, gaping window, the little things come back to him in stark relief, cold and bright and frighteningly intimate against the muzzy backdrop of his memories. 

And there are many of them: the habit she has of smoothing the fletching of an arrow between her fingers as she draws it from the quiver— how she hums snatches of tavern songs under her breath when the sorting of the parchments has gone on too long and the letters bore her; the cut of her figure against his, just only tall enough to fit the crown of her head under his chin as though she were made to stand there with her hands linked behind his back. 

It is too easy to hold her. She smells of woodsmoke and pine and leather, all too real and warm in the circle of his arms. If only this moment were as simple to carry as a locket or a dagger, that he might look upon it whenever he so liked and could remember in perfect clarity the solidness of her weight and the slip of her hair against his cheek, or the taste of her, and the startling animation she shows in the moments when spontaneity overwhelms her reason.  

"It’s just me," she’d cautioned him when she’d pulled him aside last night, darting out of the shadows like a snake, her smile sharp with a rare honesty he wasn’t used to seeing so openly on her face. Perhaps he had been gaping like a fool, perhaps she had been in a rush, but whatever it had been had made her laugh softly into the leather of his jerkin with a note of joy in her voice that sent a thrill through him. 

"What is it?" he had asked when she took his hand and led him into the inky darkness of the chambers designated for the Warden-Commander, though he’d thought he had quite a good idea what it had been about. She’d kicked the door shut behind them, and the absence of the torchlight from the hall had made him realize they’d only a lantern to go by— a good thing he didn’t need to see, then, when she stood on her toes to take his face in her hands and kiss him. It had been a shock. A pleasant shock. 

To say Lyna is brazen is to say lakes have no water. He questions how well he knows her sometimes: the colors of her courage shift like the shadows of the leaves on the forest floor, one moment yellow and bold and she’s pushing him to the wall, so consuming he’s having difficulty keeping up— and then blue and cool and subtle, a second’s worth of a connecting glance over a goblet or an accidental, shared touch that makes her apologize and him cautious. 

He can hardly believe it’s her breath he’s feeling wash gently over and back his shoulder. If you’d told him the first time he had met her that they’d be sharing a bed in any other capacity that didn’t involve dirt-crusted leathers and swaths upon swaths of blankets, he’d have laughed— or put a fist in the eye of the accuser for the presumption that he’d agree to something so out of line, and to something done with who he had thought of then as the shade of a demon trapped in mortal skin.

She’d looked so different to him, in that time: short, and dark, and spiteful, the proud arch of brows imperious and condescending instead, the sharp bow of her mouth not stern, but unpleasant and sour. 

How things change, he thinks, and wonders when they began to do so. 

—

_The Commander hefts herself into the saddle with the silken ease of a hunter and sits there with the reins gathered in her hands as she watches Oghren lock his thick arms around Anders’ waist in an attempt to not fall off their own mount._

_"Is this really necessary?" Anders asks with an edge of desperation in his voice. Lyna only gives him a tiny half-smile._

_"It builds character," she says amiably, and guides her gelding into making a languid circle so she can face them. "Afraid of heights?"_

_The mage snorts. “I’m apostate enough to know my way around a horse,” he replies, tone clipped, and then hisses when the horse shifts its weight and Oghren’s gauntleted arms tighten their pulverizing grip. “But I wasn’t exactly schooled in the art of riding with a barrel behind me.”_

_"Shut your piehole, sparklefingers," Oghren retorts, looking pale and drawn behind the bushy auburn of his whiskers. "It’s too sodding high up here."_

_"Well, if you discover a way to cover leagues on foot as fast as on hoof, tell me, and we’ll do away with the saddles," Lyna says, nudging the gelding on into a gentle walk. "Follow my lead. Try not to die, will you?"_

_"I’ll do my best," Anders says and yelps in pain when he encourages the horse to start walking. "Those are ribs you’re crushing, you brute!"_

_Oghren scowls. “More moving, less whining.”_

_Nathaniel observes as the Commander does another slow wheel to give them a last look-over, her gelding’s long legs stirring up dust and dirt. The cloudy light of the gloomy Amaranthine afternoon gives her chestnut hair a faint red cast that sends a sharp, sweet ache through his chest. It’s been years since he’s seen anything as simply lovely as that, and the silent admission startles him._

_"Howe," she says, and his awareness snaps to attention. "Round up the rear. Make sure they don’t fall off."_

_"Don’t you mean ‘back?’" the apostate says._

_"No."_

_He blinks at her in puzzled surprise at first. It’s always been ‘up here, next to me’ or ‘at my side’— which he knows full-well translates to an unspoken need of hers to keep an eye on him. He’s noticed she does it with the apostate, too, though he’s sure the mage in question hasn’t understood as much. But he is not the mage, and this speaks louder to him than any direct confession of trust. The word sounds odd and foreign to him, even in just his mind._

_Trust. He’s not sure he knows what to do with it anymore. Has he ever?_

_"Yes, Commander," he answers then, clasping the reins in his hands tight. She shows him another one of those not-quite-smiles before she turns the horse again and lets it trot on ahead, leaving them behind._

_"Don’t get cocky just ‘cause you’re up front, sparky," Nathaniel hears Oghren all but yell as he guides his horse past them, and feels a wash of pity for the filly that has to carry their combined weight._

_"Me, cocky? Perish the thought!"_

—

"What are you thinking about?"

It’s her voice, blurry with the mist of slumber, and it startles him back into the present. 

"I didn’t realize you were awake," he says quietly. She murmurs something incoherent into his arm and presses closer. 

"I haven’t been for long," she whispers, and then stifles a yawn against the back of her hand. "What time is it?"

"Early." That much he knows. "Too early to be going anywhere."

"So?"

"So… what?"

"Were you thinking about?"

He smiles just a little at that. Persistent. “Nothing.” 

"I’m too tired to get a proper answer out of you," she mumbles, unhappy. "Stubborn shem."

"You’re no better," he says, laughing under his breath when she lifts a slow hand as if to strike at him and he catches it around the wrist. "Go back to sleep." 

"You should too," she insists, and when he doesn’t answer she slides her wrist from his grip and brushes the errant hair away from his face. "Nathaniel."

The sound of his name spoken so earnestly still enthralls him. He knows it by the beat of his heart that flutters like a young bird taken to wing for the very first time. How childish. 

"I know you don’t rest well." A bit of Commander’s steel is creeping into her tone. "The least you can do is  _pretend_  to sleep while you’re with me. Knowing you’re watching is… uneasy.”

"You haven’t complained before," he says, and she snorts. Inspired by her lack of reaction, he levers an arm under her, presses her back to him, and listens to her muffled cry of surprise with a spark of sudden smugness. She stills in his embrace, so still that he thinks something is wrong until she laces her fingers through his, thin and long and scarred. 

"Thank you."

"For what?" he asks, the words getting lost somewhere between the joined rise and fall of their shoulders and the mess of her dark hair spread all along her pillow. It’s gotten longer, he thinks. Is she growing it? Her head moves, one pointed ear twitching as she burrows deeper into the uneven mattress shaped to them, into him. 

"Everything."


End file.
